Researchers

As a humanitarian aid volunteer, I am interested in the many ways that the desert acts as a guide to people moving through its space; taking travelers from water source to water source, showing distinctive peaks, buttes and ridges that are visible for miles, and preserving paths made by humans and animals centuries ago.

​I believe that how we speak about the land also impacts our relationship with it. The English language does not have the words to describe the variety of forms of the mountains in the Sonoran Desert. US American maps inscribe a colonial version of history on the landscape with place names based on Spanish, Mexican and US American conquistadors and settlers.

​In 2019, I began researching the original O’odham names of as much of the land as I could and recording them with an idea that learning to describe the desert in its native language could help me navigate in a way that feels more connected to the land and that honors the desert as a living being.